The Day Cobain Died

Chapter 6: We May Never Know

"We should go hang out in your room, Megan," Beth told me. "You can come, Anthony."

So we followed her as she strolled up the stairs and swung open my door. I immediately fell onto my bed, trying to hide my face from my brother and friends.

"You know, part of me thinks that we will never know the truth," I said, pretending to be calm.

"About Kurt's death?" asked Anthony. Um, duh? What else?

"Yeah. You know what? He could have been murdered. We may never even know.

"It's like a murder mystery," added Beth. "The pistol, the note, the bullet..."

"What kind of jerk murders Kurt Cobain?" I fumed.

Olivia sighed. "I don't know. Himself?"

"But we aren't sure. We need to know more."

"I don't know how we could possibly find out what happened," Anthony added. "There's a lot to know, but no way to find out."

"Society sucks," commented Beth. "I wouldn't be surprised if the news isn't telling us the truth."

She's right, I thought, but my words came out differently. "It's not the media's fault. It's just part of the strange mystery called death. What is death anyway?"

"Hard to define death."

Anthony nodded. "The end of life. The separation of the body from the soul."

"Death is cruel and painful," said Olivia. "What breaks my heart is that one could choose to bring about their own death."

"With a gun." Beth shuddered, as did I, imagining the pain of a gunshot to the head.

"What I wonder is, how could it be possible for someone so loaded with drugs to position and shoot a gun?"

"Good point, Megan," Anthony replied. "He probably wasn't thinking things through. This is really confusing. I guess we'll had to wait to find out more details. But we may never know."

No doubt it would be all over the cover of the newspaper tomorrow, I thought. People are sick, they find this stuff so interesting. The media will always obsess over a celebrity's death. Especially a suicide.

My head turned and I saw my reflection in the mirror. I wasn't crying, but my face looked more like a mask than my own face. Streaks of black were under my eyes, red from crying. I didn't even care about my appearance. Nothing else seemed to matter except for my emotions, which I was having trouble controlling. All I felt was despair, misery, shock, grief.

Kurt seemed so happy in the months beforehand. He didn't look like the kind of man who would want so strongly to die, who would take death into his own hands. I'd seen pictures of him while he was alive. Pictures where he smiled for the camera. He'd performed concerts. He seemed satisfied with his wife, Courtney Love, and his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. My mind was starting to have doubts. Why couldn't I know everything?